Auxiliary Gyroscope Approach for Balanced Performance via Gyro Self-Calibration

Gyro noise and bias are often performance limiting factors in space and terrestrial navigation systems, especially in cases where no aiding sensors are available. A gyro unit with good performance in both noise and bias may be very expensive and with undesirable SWaP. In this paper, we propose to make use of the self-calibrating capabilities of an inexpensive MEMS Coriolis Vibratory Gyros (CVG) gyro as an auxiliary sensor for a set of primary gyros of any type, including those not capable of self-calibrating, to greatly reduce the biases of the primary and auxiliary gyros, as the primary gyros' biases can all be made observable and calibratable using the auxiliary CVG's self-calibration capability in real-time without impacting the normal use of the primary gyros. The combined gyro system can therefore retain the good noise performance of the primary gyros while greatly improving on its bias stability performance.